Marc Forster and Daniel Craig Answer Your 007 Questions!

At first, Daniel Craig may not have been the most obvious choice to play the iconic figure of James Bond, however Craig renewed an excitement for the character with his portrayal of the sophisticated, dark-natured secret agent in Columbia Pictures’ Casino Royale in 2006, while adding his own rugged and polished mannerisms to the role which made audiences love him as the sexy new 007 spy.

This November, the blonde-hair blue-eyed British actor returns as Bond in Quantum of Solace, this time with director Marc Forster at the helm, and ComingSoon.net was sent to London on behalf of our readers to ask Craig and Forster your questions.

The trip started off with quite a welcome surprise when Virgin Atlantic sponsored our flight and sent us across the pond in style, hooking us up with Upper Class seats, which have amazing fully-flat comfortable beds and cool in-flight entertainment. The airline partnered with the Bond franchise for Casino Royale with its planes appearing in the scene shot at the Miami airport. Virgin will be back with Bond in Quantum of Solace, as he flies across the Atlantic.

Thanks to them, we were rather well-rested when we met Craig and Forster at the Soho Hotel in London the following day for our brief interview.

Craig was already in the room when we walked in and he immediately greeted us by introducing himself and shaking our hand. His arm was in a sling from a recent surgery he had due to an injury that happened while performing his own stunts. He laughed about it and said, “Please excuse my arm,” as he sat down, but he gave us his direct attention and couldn’t have been happier to answer your questions.

ComingSoon.net: Your fans at ComingSoon.net would like to know with regards to storytelling and characterization, how do you feel James Bond evolves as a character in this movie?

Daniel Craig: I hope kind of well. There’s no sort of clear answer. He’s a spy. I think he hardens. I think is slightly distressing. We touch upon it in “Casino Royale” and I don’t want to get all kind of deep and silly about it. But, he has his heart broken and suddenly you kind of see this broken man and I find that very interesting. But that can’t be James Bond, because he can’t be broken. He can’t, because if he was broken it wouldn’t work. It’s finding that person that we can trust but not and that’s something I wanted to make sure that we put into the first film that I don’t want. Someone just said to me, “well he’s a bit like a bad guy” and I was like, “Yeah, well he kills people for a living.” I mean where’s the ambiguity? There’s no ambiguity in that and it’s up to the audience to decide whether or not they think it’s right that he kills that person at that particular time. So the development of the character is one that we know this is what he does, this is how he gets it done. This is how he behaves in certain circumstances and hopefully he’s open enough as a character for us to believe that when he hits something new he’s discovering it as we’re discovering it. I’m very nervous about answering questions about kind of how I discover characters or where we take characters too because I think it’s so much about what the audience perceives and how they believe it or how they don’t believe it. I took something we did in “Casino Royale” and I’ve taken him on and he’s moved on but you know he’s still damaged and f*cked up and all those sort of things that you know he’d hopefully was in the first one. And you know he kills people for a living. He must wake up in the night occasionally in a bit of cold sweat, but maybe we’ll never see that, I dunno, who knows?

CS: Here’s the second question from our audience: You’ve been compared to Steve McQueen because you prefer to do most of your own stunts, so how important do you think it is for actors to do their own stunts?

Craig: (holds up is arm in a sling) Very important. (Laughing)

CS: How much pressure is there on you as an actor in this type of role to do your own stunts?

Craig: For me, there’s no pressure at all to do my own stunts. This is a longterm thing that needed fixing. (Referring to his arm) And this is my break, that’s why I’m having it fixed. I really enjoy it. There’s a tradition in movies that goes back right to the beginning when these people turned up in Hollywood and said, “Can you fall off a horse?” I can fall off a horse. (laugh) You’re a star (laugh) and that there’s going to Buster Keaton to Chaplin to all those physical Certainly I would be lying if I didn’t say that I used to watch those movies avidly as a child and sort of marvel at the fact that the camera never moved and the house fell down and they were at the top of a building and you were going, “My God it’s them!” There was no special effects and I can never get away from that in movies, however good the CGI is, however good the sort of double is, an audience knows, they just know. You either go with it or you don’t go with it and if you’re going with it, it’s because you’re enjoying the movie and it’s part of the process. If that moment you go “Oh, f*ck me, it’s them,” it’s just a little bit of extra excitement that you can add into a movie and I just I enjoy doing them you know. It’s part of why we’re doing action movies so the more that I can get involved, the more that I understand the process when you do it, and as you well know when you’re shooting an action sequence God it can take In one sequence in “Casino Royale” it took three months. Not with me there all the time but it was that’s it took because of second units shooting on it. So keeping your head going well where am I now, I mean I’m hanging here I was going there. So the more I’m involved with it the more I can hopefully put a reality into that situation, and I get a kick out of it.

Marc Forster was also very interested in what you had to ask him:

ComingSoon.net: A lot of people asked about Q, Moneypenny and the gadgets whether they might return in this movie or in the next series. If you don’t think so, why or why not?

Marc Forster: Q and Moneypenny are not returning because it’s a continuation of “Casino Royale” so it wouldn’t have made any sense not to have them in “Casino Royale” and suddenly bring them back in here as it like picks up an hour right after. I think maybe in the future eventually, but it’s really up to (producers) Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli if they want to bring them back. I think it might be a good idea to bring them back, but in “Quantum of Solace” it didn’t make any sense for me because I felt it should have some connection to “Casino Royale.” They didn’t, so I didn’t bring them back in this one. And in regard to gadgets, there are a few gadgets in it. I think less than in the past because I feel like we have so many gadgets today in our daily lives. I think the phenomena of gadgets isn’t as interesting as it used to be because we use them now so much in our personal life. I thought the impact of the story, dialogue and emotional content is more important to me than gadgets.

CS: Our second question from the fans is whether we will see SPECTRE or a similar organization introduced in “Quantum of Solace “and does this organization have something to do with the new title?

Forster: There is a similar organization to SPECTRE in this film and the organization’s called Quantum.

In addition to talking to Craig and Forster, Columbia Pictures set up special events for us that all relate to the new movie, so stay tuned for more details on what we participated in!

You can also read more questions asked and answered by Craig and Forster at the following sites who also took part in the event: